Saturday 29 June 2019 – Agios Stephanos

We finally left our last anchorage.  Richard did some research and found this harbour on the north of Corfu.   We haven’t been here before, so we thought we would give it a try.

The weather forecast is for some wind from behind, so at anchor we put up the mainsail and set off. Well, we were optimistic.  The wind was in the right direction but there was barely any of it.  It sometimes made it up to 5 knots but that was about it.  We had both sails up but had to put the engine on to motor sail as without we were doing less than 3 knots. We even put out a fishing line, but had no luck with that either.
We arrived here just before 3pm.  The bay is small but lovely.  The town harbour is full of hire boats and some local boats, so (with exceptions I will mention) it is an anchor job.  There is a pretty looking beach and harbour front restaurants.   It really is a place where we ought to have gone ashore, but we have never blown up our dinghy!  We were not going to do it now when we are returning to port tomorrow.

There are quite a lot of boats here at anchor for a small bay.   Finding a place to put the anchor out is tricky.  Especially so as at the first attempt we dragged.  But we seem to hold on the next attempt.  Despite the late hour we delayed lunch for a swim and R checked the anchor.  It is so far dug in that you can’t even see the shank!

So a nice quiet afternoon reading and swimming.  More and more boats came in.  There is a flotilla of skippered charters which has moored one boat to a pier and rafted out two others to it!  Richard says we should remember how crowded the anchorage at East Head is.  It isn’t much bigger than this and on a summer weekend there could be up to 50 or more boats there.  Tonight there are 12 boats at anchor here.  The difference is that at East Head our boat was about the largest, while here it is the smallest!  45-50 foot boats take up a lot more room.

The tranquillity of this harbour is a bit disturbed by a wedding (of an English couple) going on at one of the harbour side restaurants.  The Greek music is going strong as I write.

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